Confused? Let me explain.
Let’s say you’ve had a fairly good year. You’ve
worked out goals, you’ve put in place budgets,
you’ve tracked spending, you’ve paid off your credit
card debts and you might have a savings buffer in
your accounts. Fantastic! So you arrive at December
or at the Boxing Day sales and you decide to reward
yourself for having had an outstanding year. Or you
decide to splurge a little extra on Christmas this
year, because you can. And somehow that splurging
and shopping and spending ends up undoing
all the great work from your year and you end up
feeling defeated and slipping back into a whole lot
of bad habits. That’s like running a great race but
then stopping at the last hurdle or having a lie down
while everyone else in your team plays on!
Now I love a good sale and buying presents for
others so I’m certainly not advocating that you sit
at home, do nothing, buy nothing and act like the
grinch! However I am suggesting that you make
sure you are conscious of your spending this holiday
season and you put plans in place to make sure
you enjoy it both now and when your credit card
statement arrives late January.
Now I know from hours of watching and playing
sport that athletes always go into a race or a
game with a strategy. And generally that strategy
encompasses the moment they start the race to the
moment they finish. That’s because they understand
the mental toughness it takes to finish a race well
or to win a game. So my question to you as we
reach the final moments in this year is what financial
strategies are you going to put in place to make
sure you end your race well?
Perhaps your strategy will include writing down
every person you’re buying for and keeping track of
how much you’re spending using free apps such as
Evernote or Santas Bag.
Perhaps it’s working out how much you’ &Rv